The 10th International Scientific Conference was held at the University of "Goce Delcev" - Shtip gathering around 80 professors, researchers, scholars and practitioners to discuss several topics concerning the social changes in the global world.

A separate Panel on Free Legal Aid was held in the framework of this conference jointly organised by the EU/Council of Europe Horizontal Facility III Action “Towards a consolidated and more efficient Free Legal Aid (FLA) system in North Macedonia” and the Legal Clinic at the Faculty of Law in Shtip. Around 20 researchers introduced and presented their work, ideas, results and research methods and shared information about the most recent challenges in the Free Legal Aid System in North Macedonia.

The FLA Panel was welcomed by Milica Shutova – Professor and Head of the Legal Clinic in Shtip, Muhamed Toci - State Secretary at the Ministry of Justice, Oleg Soldatov – Head at the Council of Europe Programme Office in Skopje and Alan Uzelac – Professor at the Faculty of Law in Zagreb and Head of the Legal Clinic in Zagreb.

During the meeting, the participants had the opportunity to discuss key challenges related to the costs in legal aid cases and indentified the need for legislative changes, especially concerning the Law on Free Legal Aid, in order to clarify some of the problems that emerge in practice.  The results of this conference will be published in open access journal, ensuring that the valuable insights shared by the esteemed presenters reach a wide audience.

The action “Towards a consolidated and more efficient Free Legal Aid (FLA) system in North Macedonia” is part from the “Horizontal Facility for the Western Balkans and Türkiye III”, a joint European Union and Council of Europe programme implemented by the Council of Europe.